Dept for Education benchmarking tool

[Helen]

Has anybody spent any time looking at the benchmarking tool, available from the DfE here

I hadn't come across it before attending a conference recently and an interesting point was raised regarding the percentage of PVI settings achieving a good/outstanding Ofsted and the percentage of children reaching a good level of development at the end of the reception year.

 

For example, 72% of settings in East Sussex received good/outstanding and 52% of children achieved a good level of development (EYFS profile)

In Windsor and Maidenhead, the figures were 77% and 65% respectively.

In Brighton and Hove, they were 86% and 64%.

In Darlington, they were 56% and 54%.

 

There are many things to consider with this data, eg free school meals, percentage take up of nursery places, and so on.

 

Do you think there are any conclusions to draw from this data? Is there/should there be a link between the two figures?

[mundia]

Hi Helen

I had a good look at this when it came out in the summer. In terms of can we draw any conclusions from this, Id say 'no' is the simple answer to that one.

 

As with all of these things, the difficulty (in my view anyway) is that the good/outstanding Ofsted figures run to March 2012, but the EYFSP data would be for children who probably left their setting in 2010 (EYFSP data for 2011 at the end of reception year). So to even begin to make any sense of anything comparable, we would need to look back at the OFSTED data for 2009-10.

 

In addition this data does not account for those who attend school in one LA, but who went to a setting in another. It also doesn't account for the children who attended a maintained setting. Although that figure is given for children attending any setting, there is no further breakdown of EYFSP scores for those who attended each type of setting... we do this at local level so we can see the EYFSP scores for those who attend a maintained setting, PVI, Childminder or none.

 

And then there's the other factors as you said..FSM; SoAs; SEN; BME etc etc.

 

Maybe I need another look at it, but I didn't find that this told me very much at all. perhaps it is helpful for those who want to make some basic comparisons between their own and neighbouring LAs? The only ting I found interesting was the % of children who attended a PVI, which varies hugely..in my old LA, it was down at 30% whereas in my region now, it it closer to 60%.

 

Was there anything you thought particularly useful, and Ill have another look in case my thinking is skewed.

[Helen]

No, nothing really. It just caused a bit of a stir when it was discussed at the conference, eg data can be a dangerous thing! Some participants thought it might initially look as if reception classes were not performing well enough considering the good/outstanding settings their children were coming from.

[Rea]

That's exactly how it appears! Or, on the other hand, I've worked in places where the Ofsted report was considerably different to what went on day to day, so are all the settings who get an outstanding really getting it?